


wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today

by sabinelagrande



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, Non-Chronological, Road Trips, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:28:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By god, Clint is going to find out.</p><p>[Major movie spoilers inside.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today

The bike's a bad choice; Clint already knows this maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty miles in. The ride's a straight shot, but it's a straight shot all the way across the country, three thousand miles, give or take. He's not quite sure he's ever gone that distance by ground; he's been a lot of places, traveled a lot of miles, but always in fits and starts, only so far at a time.

This one's got to be all at once, all or nothing. They're going to follow him, but if they want him they'll just have to come and get him, because he's not stopping, not until they make him, not until it's done.

* * *

_He never sees Phil's body. He doesn't want to, and Natasha, who knows him better than anyone else, even better than Phil did, says he shouldn't. He lets himself be led around for the first week or two there, pushes his way through mission reports and actually submits everything in a timely fashion, which is miraculous coming from any field agent, much less Clint._

_They don't tell him they're assigning him a new handler, but Maria does everything work-related for him that Phil isn't around to do anymore; it takes him a while to figure out that they've just done it without telling him. A wall in his quarters bears the brunt of that one, and his fist bears the brunt of the wall, ending with him in medical, where they don't ask any questions._

_Clint hates kid gloves._

* * *

He doesn't eat, not really, just enough to keep himself going, snacks from the displays at the front of gas stations, next to the lighters and the cheap, tacky souvenirs. 

There are always donuts, and Clint doesn't look at them. That was a thing, Phil and donuts, a joke he wasn't in on. Drove Clint crazy when he would eat the powdered ones; Phil could somehow eat a whole pack without getting the sugar anywhere, but it always bothered Clint to no end, the idea that he could screw so many things up just by dropping one.

It took him a little while to figure out Phil did it mostly to get a rise out of Clint; took Clint a long time to figure out a lot of things about Phil.

* * *

_"This is need to know," Maria says, passing the file across the table to him, and he doesn't miss the fact that she's wearing gloves. "You're not cleared for it."_

_He reaches for the knife on his belt, flipping it open and using the blade to turn the pages. Two pages in, and he looks up at her in disbelief._

_"You're not cleared for it," she says, "but you need to know."_

* * *

It's gorgeous, where Phil's hidden himself, not too far from Redwoods, not too far from the ocean, but the beautiful forests that line the roads are just a bunch of plants at this point, a blur of verdant green that's almost hard to look at through tired eyes, as rich as it is.

They can trace absolutely everything, so Clint's been working from paper maps the entire way- not that "Keep driving west until you hit the ocean" takes a lot of map skills. The girl at the gas station looks perplexed when he actually asks her for directions, like she's wondering if his iPhone is broken or something, but she gets him there, to a quaint-looking house that's a little ways from town.

The house is worn in, like people have been living there for a long time, and there are two cars in the driveway it shares with the next house, where it doesn't look like anyone's home. 

He's done a lot of things that were easier than getting off the bike and walking to the door, and some of them were in active war zones.

Phil doesn't respond when he knocks, which doesn't surprise Clint at all; Phil certainly has eyes on him though, and it pisses Clint off a little, because he didn't come all this way to stand on the porch and talk to the door. "Coulson," Clint says. "Put down the goddamn shotgun and open the door. I didn't come on business."

Clint can hear the locks being undone, the sound of whatever firearm Phil was going to blow away the Girl Scouts or whoever with- Clint knows he'll still have his sidearm close at hand, because he's not a dumbass.

The door opens, and Clint's heart twists and snaps; he feels like he might throw up, honestly. Phil doesn't say anything, just holds the door open so Clint can come in.

* * *

_"Doesn't do me any good," Clint says, sitting back in his chair; his stomach is in knots, a headache forming at his temple. "If there's anybody they'd be expecting to go off the reservation, it'd be-" He frowns. "It'd be Natasha, but I'm second choice. I won't get four hours away before they'll either shoot me or bring me back."_

_"All I can do is tell you," she tells him, shaking her head. "Technically, I can't even do that."_

_"Kinda wish you hadn't," he says._

_"No, you don't," she says._

_"No," he admits, sighing. "I don't."_

* * *

There's coffee; it's a little stale, sitting all morning, like Phil didn't know he was coming, but Clint fixes it with a bunch of milk and too much sugar. They hardly even talk, because there isn't anything to say, no topics of discussion ready at hand when you're sitting at a table with someone who's your partner, someone who's more, someone who's dead.

"Did you bring anything with you?" Phil asks.

"Only what fit in the panniers," he says. "Toothbrush, change of socks, ammo, you know how it is."

Phil smiles a little, half-way, the way he always did. "Let me help you bring it in."

It doesn't take much, because Clint wasn't exaggerating. He went half believing that he'd turn right around and come back, that it was a lie, a test, that Phil just wouldn't let him in the door. Later he'll buy some stuff, enough to stay, but that's not important now.

Whoever decorated Phil's bedroom did a bad fucking job of it; it's got the same cherry wood floors as the rest of the house, but the walls have light blue paper with little pink and white flowers. It's so distractingly, charmingly ugly that Clint kind of gets lost in it, and he doesn't snap out of it until he hears Phil plunk his stuff down on the chest by the wall.

"You're exhausted," Phil says. It isn't a question; Clint doesn't challenge him, because he knows that Phil knows him, that it must be written all over him right now. "Take a shower and go to sleep."

"Tell me you'll be here," he says.

"Of course I will," Phil tells him, and the question sounded silly in his head until he heard the answer, until he knew that Phil understood what he meant, what he needed.

* * *

_He buys the bike off of Steve. Steve's just bought a new one, one he's really proud of; the only thing Clint knows about motorcycles is how to drive really fast on them, but it's clearly cherry. The one he sells to Clint isn't as nice, but it's still worth more than what Steve asks for it. They squabble about it for a minute, in a friendly kind of way, and Clint gives him something fair before riding off with it._

_Steve pretends he doesn't know what Clint wants the bike for; Steve almost certainly doesn't know the whole story, but he knows Clint's going._

* * *

It's evening when he wakes up, and Phil's made dinner; Phil's not a particularly good cook, but it's soup, and it's kind of hard to screw it up. It doesn't matter much, because Clint is starving, two days of nothing but Hot Fries and Oreo knock-offs getting to him, and he goes back for seconds and thirds.

"I'm still tired," Clint says, once Phil has rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

"Let's go to bed, then," Phil replies, easy as anything, and Clint has been wound up so tightly that he hasn't even known how bad it was; it's not until this moment, the way he unfurls, spins, that he even really understands.

Phil goes into the bathroom, ostensibly to get ready for bed, and Clint doesn't even pretend, just strips down all the way and waits. When Phil comes in, he's not wearing anything either, and it's kind of funny and comforting at the same time, that they're still on the same wavelength, one Clint thought he'd never operate on again with anyone.

When they make love, it's slow and quiet; Phil is steady and Clint is _desperate_ , needing it so badly that he doesn't even know what to do with himself. Phil just covers him up, holding him down, and the first push, the way it feels when Phil's body interlocks with his, breaks Clint apart entirely. There's nothing left of him, hasn't been since Phil died, and it's going to take forever to set him right, but this is where it starts, for Clint, where he comes back together.

He clutches at Phil, so close he can't even see Phil's face. He's crying, his tears falling onto Phil's shoulder, he's crying and it doesn't matter, not in face of everything that's happened. Phil is making little noises into his ear, things Clint can barely make sense of, but Clint doesn't care so long as he can hear Phil's voice again, low and soft and just for Clint, not for anybody else.

In the morning, he wakes up later than usual, but Phil is still beside him, sitting up and reading a book. It was always things like that with Phil, the way he saw what Clint needed without being told, whether or not he indulged him. Clint knows Phil is probably being nice because he's afraid of what Clint's going to do, of whether he's going to snap. Phil could take him down, no problem, but neither of them want to see him like that.

There's more coffee- it's Coulson, there's always more coffee- and there are scones; Clint looks askance at them a little, but they're good, orange and cranberry, and Phil tells him about the retired woman down the street who refuses to stop baking him things. 

"I mow her yard," he says, shrugging, like it's totally normal that Phil Coulson, feared and dead Agent of SHIELD, does yard work for little old ladies.

They take their coffee and sit out on the back porch; there are rocking chairs there, and Clint is starting to wonder if all this stuff came with the house, or if SHIELD has really improved their taste in safehouses. There's a creek out back, forming a boundary between the houses and the woods beyond, the whole thing inappropriately serene.

"They told me you bled out," Clint says; he's holding his mug with both hands, and the warmth seeping into them is comforting him. "That Loki stabbed you."

"LMD," Phil tells him, and Clint looks at him in confusion. "Life Model Decoy. Exact replica of me. Stark made it, but he doesn't know we used it. At least, we're pretty sure we found all his bugs."

"No, no, if Tony knew he'd have told us all about it," Clint says, " _really_ loudly." He puts the mug down on the table. "Why?"

"I had to," Phil says. "It was for the good of the Initiative."

"You." Clint is having trouble processing what he's hearing. "You- you thought if we sacrificed someone to Loki, then we'd win? What the fuck kind of Aztec logic is that?"

"Someone had to die, or it was never going to happen," Phil says, softly, matter-of-factly. "Someone had to die, or the world would have ended. It was my turn this time."

"How fucking arrogant are you?" Clint snaps, disgusted; he stands up, pacing, because it's just impossible to rage at somebody from a rocking chair. "How can you possibly think that we wouldn't have come together without you? That we would have let aliens invade and take over the Earth without _you_? And good fucking plan, Coulson, form people into a body by ripping out the heart." Phil's expression hasn't changed, but there's something different, a shift when Clint says that. "You just didn't trust us. A bunch of superheroes, and you couldn't even trust us to act like adults."

"I trust you," he says, without hesitation. "But you're not Tony Stark. You're not Banner. You're not Thor. You actually _are_ an adult." Clint snorts at that. "I don't need to tell you that I trust you with my life, because I've done it a hundred times. I need the other ones, but I didn't trust some of them as far as I could throw them. Now I know I can. Now I know _we_ can."

"You could have told me," Clint says, sitting down. He feels exhausted, broken again, like all of this has just ended up worse than it started, like he wasted all that time and effort just to be torn down again.

"No, I really couldn't have," Phil says; Clint looks up at him, and Phil is looking back, his face pained. "No one could know. Imagine what would have happened if someone- anyone- hadn't tried to save me."

Clint swallows hard, trying hard not to think of everything that statement entails. "So what happens now?"

"In a few weeks, maybe months, there will be a mission," he says. "You'll get word that a few rogue followers of Loki have had me locked up all this time while they waited for him to come back, and that Loki destroyed my LMD, not me. They probably won't send you. They know about us, so they'll probably decide it's too much of a risk."

Clint's eyes widen in shock. "But I didn't-"

"It's a spy organization, Barton," he says, smiling fondly. "Everybody knows." Clint gives him a look that clearly says how unamused he is by that idea. "You won't find anyone with me, but I'll be just outside the base of some skinhead terrorists, so please, don't feel like you have to hold back."

Clint gives him a look. "You're not going to deal with a group of terrorists just so you can have a good staging ground?"

Phil looks saddened. "There are always more skinheads. The cell they'll be using doesn't even exist yet. You'll clean that up, and then I'll come back."

"Easy as that?" Clint says.

Phil's face grows even more serious. "No one ever said anything at all about easy."

"I'm still pissed off at you," Clint says warningly, "but I don't want to go."

"Then don't," Phil says, like it's that simple, like there's nothing stopping him at all.

That's when Clint starts to wonder if there really is, if there's any reason why he can't just pull new-found Avenger rank and just take a break if he wants, fuck off like Tony or Steve gets to. He owes SHIELD a lot, but by now, they owe him a whole hell of a lot too.

"All I've got for lunch is sandwiches," Phil says carefully, like he knows how important that statement is, that it has nothing to do with meat and bread.

"I need to go to Target." Clint responds, with the same weight as a code phrase, and he can feel the tension flow out of them, its departure almost like a physical thing. "Yeah, I know, taking the archer to Target is still funny. Get it out of your system."

Phil smiles. "After lunch, then."

"Cool," Clint says, sitting back in his rocking chair and looking out into the distance, past the stream and into the trees. Maybe he puts his hand over the arm of his chair, and maybe Phil puts his own in it, and maybe they both ignore it all morning, while they rock back and forth.

* * *

_Clint kick-starts the bike and pulls out, waving vaguely back at Steve. He stops for gas, and that's it, he's going._

_He may not make it there and he may not make it back, but by god, he's going._


End file.
